01-07-2018

Dutch Design Daily

1 / 8

By

By

By

By

By

By

By

By
Shahar Livne www.shaharlivnedesign.com

Metamorphism

By 01-07-2018

Shahar Livne (1989) is an Israeli-born designer living in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. She graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Her project ‘Metamorphism’ speculates on the future of new raw materials based on discarded plastics within the context of craftsmanship. It entails a research on what is natural and what new aesthetics and cultural realities could emerge related to plas­tics when we no longer merely see them as polluting, massed-produced and cheap materials.

Shahar Livne: “Climate change, deforestation and pollution threat­en the existence of many natural raw materials used in traditional craftsmanship. As those mate­rials disappear, the knowledge of those crafts dis­appears along with them. At the same time, new natural materials are emerging. The presence of man-made plastics in the environment naturally forms a new material resource, marking a shift between old notions of nature and culture. I imagine a not too distant future, be­yond peak oil, where petrol-based plastics can be collected from nature as semi-natural hybrid materials, used as a new raw material by craftspeople.”

“I creat­ed a new clay-like material based on discarded plastics designated for land­filling or incineration and waste-stream sediments (colliery spoil and marble leftovers), which I envision as a valuable future commodity. The new material is named ‘lithoplast’, derived from ancient Greek (lithos is the word for rock or stone, and plast means that something can be molded or shaped). The ma­terial is formed in a process borrowed from geology called metamorphism, the same process that transforms limestone into marble in nature. This material can be used for sculp­tural handmade products, illustrating a new speculative cultural value. At the moment I am testing its potential for further conceptual design applications.”